Flybrix Review: This Lego Drone Makes Failure Fantastically Fun

My first drone flew for maybe five seconds, lifting off slowly from the table before leaning hard to the left, careening for the wall. I froze in a panic, only realizing I could steer the dang thing right at the moment of impact. Its frame exploded into a spectacular shower of Legos. It was right then, after that first fantastic crash, that I knew I was hooked.

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Designed by MIT, Caltech, and UW Madison alumni, Flybrix is a kit of Lego pieces, wired propellers, a battery, and circuit board that when assembled well (or poorly), can take you from jumble of plastic to DIY drone flight in about five minutes. And then from flight to a bunch of Legos on the floor after another five seconds.

The process of building the drone is ridiculously simple, with just a little bit of setup. Connect the controller board, which serves as the drone's body and brain, to a tiny battery pack. Then, build a Lego body around the board, attach the propellers, and plug them into the board with jumper cables. Once you've connected the drone to the Flybrix smartphone app (or paired with the Flybrix controller, but I found my phone to work just fine), it is just a matter of turning up the throttle and seeing what happens. In my case, usually a gnarly crash.

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A build I whipped up in about two minutes.

Building a balanced, sturdy airframe out of Lego is not particularly easy. If you're not into the trial and error of trying, Flybrix has instructions for three different models that can be built with the included parts: a quadcopter, a hexacopter, and an octocopter, depending on how involved you want to get and your level of piloting skill. I spent a little time messing around with these designs, following the instructions just like I used to as a kid. But, in my experience, these didn't fly all that much better than my freeform creations. Or at the very least, I was not any better at flying them. So I usually wound up veering off and building my own monstrosities, each one popping up for a few brief seconds of flight before coming back in for an extremely hard landing. I loved every second of carnage.

If it sounds like I am fixated on the crashing as opposed to the flying, that is because I am. Crashes are just good, clean fun that turn failure into a sort of success. Yes, I crashed, but what a good crash! Anyone who has ever rolled a Lego car down the stairs knows what I am talking about. But crashing is also what I spent the majority of my non-building time doing. Over the course of several hours, I probably spent roughly 90 percent of my time building, eight percent of my time crashing, and maybe two percent in actual flight.

The aftermath of a hard landing.

Flying a drone is hard in general, and building it out of Legos only complicates matters. If you're building your own design, it might be unbalanced, which is going to make it very hard for even a skilled pilot to fly. This isn't necessarily bad—constructing designs that are evenly balanced, light, and relatively reenforced is a fun challenge. But if you want to actually learn to fly, these challenges only get in the way because every time you crash, it means you have to rebuild at least some of the drone before you try flying again.

If you're in it to build (and crash), that is fine. Great even! There is an all-you-can-build buffet of problems to solve. But that's a tough ratio if you just want to fly. This makes Flybrix a much better toy for aspiring engineers than it is for aspiring pilots, who might do better cutting their teeth on a cheap drone that doesn't fall apart after every crash.

And speaking of engineering, a little bit of technical know-how is required. The chip that serves as your drone's brain doesn't have its own internet connection, so updating it with new and improved firmware involves plugging it into the computer and utilizing tools that are usually the domain of electronics tinkerers. It's not hard, and Flybrix has instructions to walk you through the process, but it could prove a little unnerving for less tech-savvy pilots (or their less tech-savvy parents).

Those minor caveats aside, Flybrix is a bundle of fun unlike any other drone or pile of Legos I've ever had the pleasure of playing with. I cannot overstate the sheer glee of turning up the throttle and watching your own awkward creation take to the sky. That is, so long as you also don't mind seeing it come down. Hard.

Flybrix is available now from the Flybrix website, at a price of $190 for a basic kit you control with a phone, or $250 for the kit that comes with the controller. If you use the code PM Free Ship, orders in the U.S. will have free shipping until April 14th.

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